


Homecoming

by Elialys



Category: Fringe
Genre: Drama, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-08 22:42:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elialys/pseuds/Elialys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you go from "Sounds like a massive pain in the ass" to "I'm pregnant"? Peter and Olivia through the seasons, series of 'missing' scenes, one per episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.01 Pilot

Olivia had thought drawing a bath would be a good idea.

She had done so almost instinctively, having years ago taken the habit of soaking her body in warm water whenever she felt too sore from whatever exertion her training or job had put her through. And one thing was certain tonight: she had rarely felt so battered up, physically speaking. How she felt on an emotional level was another thing altogether.

As she moved through her apartment, her mind elsewhere, numbed with exhaustion and grief, her every muscle ached, the pain so deep it seeped all the way down to her bones. She had poured herself an impressive glass of whiskey –another habit she had taken years ago, and had already downed half of it by the time she reached the bathroom and turned the water on.

Putting the glass down onto the sink, she started undressing herself, grimacing in pain as she did so. The simple act of untying her hair made the muscles of her neck protest, and it only got worse when she unbuttoned her shirt and took it off. She found herself staring at her reflection without really seeing it, her gaze moving over the darkening skin of her shoulder; surely another after effect of jumping off a building.

Her head was filled with the sound of the running water, coming from behind her, as it cascaded out of the faucet and into the tub in an angry rumble. She shifted her eyes from her own reflection to the pouring water, almost hypnotized as the tub progressively filled up. She thought of the lab, then, buried underneath Harvard University; she thought of the smell of dust and chemicals that had been permeating the stale air. And then, she remembered salt water and metal rods sinking into the sensitive flesh of her neck, sinking directly into her spine.

She remembered dreaming of him, dreaming of John.

She remembered blood splattered all over his face, trickling out of his mouth and down his chin, as his body arched in agony, shaking against hers at his upcoming death; the air had smelled of burnt plastic, then, and as he spoke his last few words, his breath had smelled faintly of copper, bleeding to death from the inside.

When her gaze focused once more on her reflection in the mirror, she realized she had unconsciously brought a hand up to her nape, her fingers tracing the place where the rods had perforated her skin, and all she saw looking back at her was a bruised girl with a broken heart; suddenly, she felt like she had turned back into a kid.

How many times had she examined the discoloration of her flesh back then, back when her step-father still used her as a punching bag whenever she didn't run away from his grip fast enough?

As this thought pierced through her as sharply as metal had pierced through her flesh, she averted her eyes and turned around, unwilling to let herself think about a past that was best left buried deep, because there really was no point in lamenting over herself and her misfortune.

She turned the water off hurriedly, realizing that soaking her body into water right now would be very unwise if she wanted to keep the memories of the past few days –if not hours- from getting the best of her. She sat on the edge of the tub and plunged a hand in the steaming water, pulling on the plug. She remained completely still for a long stretch time, listening to the gurgling sound and staring at the the swirling vortex it created; as she watched, vacantly, it was as if her ability to feel anything was what was being sucked down the drain.

All she really felt was thirst for more whiskey, because she knew enough of it would provide her with a different kind of numbness, one that wasn't rooted so deeply in pain. Before long, she was back on her feet, standing once more in front of the mirror as she gulped down the rest of her glass, unable not to stare at her reflection again.

The truth was, she felt like a stranger in her own skin.

The past few days had been too intense and insane, not to mention agonizing in every imaginable ways, and according to Walter Bishop, there were more of those than she could deal with. She remembered standing _right there_ not even a week ago, in front of that same mirror, getting ready to meet John. What she remembered most of all was how she had felt back then, almost giddy with excitement at the thought of seeing her lover soon, the kind of giddiness that caused her to act in ways that had mostly been foreign to her before John.

She had enjoyed putting on some faint makeup before each of their meetings, playing with her hair and adding a touch of perfume upon her pulsing points; being with John was all about the thrill, about feeling the raw power of her undeniable femininity, something he brought out of her with ridiculous ease, and she paid him back by using it on him. He had made her feel vibrantly alive, and it had reflected in her flushed cheeks and twinkling eyes as she had gotten ready for their secret date.

Above all, he had made her feel _normal_ , a feeling she had spent most of her life seeking without really realizing it, not even remembering why she was seeking it in the first place.

In comparison, her face was sickeningly pale tonight, her hair falling flat and lifeless over her shoulders. There were dark and deep shadows under her eyes, an unmistakable sign of strain and exhaustion, of grief as well. That last one was even more evident in the way the rims of her eyes were despicably reddened. She hadn't cried in hours, not since she had let herself break down in the back of that ambulance, and she would make sure she didn't shed another tear for _him_ if she could help it, but her body didn't seem to care. Her green eyes remained red and too bright, as if she had spent the day sobbing instead of only a few minutes, which in a way, she might have been doing internally.

She could hardly believe that what she was seeing now was the same woman who had stood there a week ago with a smile on her lips and something close to those cliché stars shining in her eyes. Honestly, she could barely comprehend what had happened, none of this made sense.

She felt as if her life had just been shred into pieces, along with everything she had ever known, and now, she was left trying to put these pieces back together. Except that this puzzle didn't make any sense at all, pieces that used to fit together having transformed and morphed, and she knew they would never fit again.

Instead of trying to solve it anyway, with a resolve that was typically hers, all she felt like doing was sit in the middle of this mayhem and cry at her own foolishness, cry at how betrayed she felt, at how the man she loved had used her, _used her for Christ's sake!,_ or how she didn't recognize her life anymore, all traces of normality shattered away and gone for good.

It came to her, then, that what she needed right now –beside more whiskey, was someone to talk to, someone who could confirm that she wasn't merely stuck in some deformed, parallel universe where everything had been turned upside down. She needed someone who could understand what it felt like, to have to throw all of your beliefs away and accept new ones, ones that involved things like mind control, teleportation or even astral projection.

She needed to be told this was real. That it hadn't been all for nothing.

Rachel was out of the question of course, though she knew hearing her niece's voice would be a welcomed comfort…but then she would have to deal with her sister's questions, and she hated lying to her. She still felt too ashamed to be able to speak to Charlie either, no matter the fact that she knew he wouldn't judge her.

The name that popped into her mind then was so obvious and yet so outrageous that she might have chuckled if she'd still possessed the ability to laugh. Thinking of calling _him_ was completely ridiculous, they were strangers, and after the diverse kind of blackmail she had put him through these past few days, she doubted he wanted to have anything to do with her unless he was forced to. And yet, now that the thought was there, she couldn't push his face out of her head.

Peter Bishop's life might have been the complete opposite of hers when they had met in Baghdad, one of them conning while the other fought for justice, the fact remained that they had both been thrown into this without much of a choice, unable to go back to _before_.

Also, in some odd, inexplicable ways, the thought of calling Peter seemed almost...natural. When she decided to go through with it shortly after that, having put on her robe without another glance at her reflection and making her way to the bedroom, she decided to blame this on her exhaustion and the rather impressive shot of whiskey she had downed. She dialed his number without thinking; the FBI had provided him with a phone, and the digits were now safely stored into her brain, never to be erased.

She let herself fall upon her bed as the phone rang, sprawling onto her back, unable to contain a grimace of pain as her entire body still throbbed in aching soreness. She really wished she could have taken that bath.

He picked up after only two rings, and his rather grumpy "Hello?" instantly took her thoughts away from relaxing waters and back to what she was doing –calling a stranger really late at night even though she had no real motive behind that call, and absolutely no idea what she was supposed to say now.

Speech completely deserted her for a second, her mouth opening and closing as her mind desperately tried to come up with something. "Uh…hi, it's Olivia…Dunham," she added after a short pause, realizing that they definitely weren't close enough for him to be recognizing her voice.

"I know," he answered right away, his voice already ringing with the same sarcastic notes he had been using on her rather often in the short time they had known each other. "You'd never believe it, but phones now do this wonderful thing when they flash the name of whoever's calling you on your screen; you should try and talk the bureau into updating your phone if they haven't yet."

The remark wasn't exactly mocking, but it wasn't necessary either, and all it succeeded in doing was intensify Olivia's embarrassment; she now felt utterly stupid for having even thought about calling him in the first place, her eyes roaming the room in aggravated panic, as if she could find salvation in her furniture. It only got worse when her gaze stopped on the digital clock on her nightstand, and she realized it was well past midnight.

"I'm…sorry," she almost stuttered then, bringing a hand up to her eyes in shame. "I shouldn't have called, I didn't realize it was so late, I probably woke you up."

Peter chuckled then, not unkindly, though definitely tiredly. "That would be unlikely, as I just spent the better part of two hours convincing my dear father that we didn't need to burn off all the sheets and curtains in the room. Turned out he suffers from mysophobia on top of everything else –the irrational fear of germs. As it also turned out, he likes walking around naked after that kind of attack, he says the breeze ' _soothes him'_. It will be a true miracle if get over that trauma any time soon." Then, he added: "But I'm pretty sure you didn't call to hear me talk about how much I'm enjoying babysitting my father."

After another pause, she let her hand fall from her face, reopening her eyes to stare at her ceiling. Oddly enough, his small monologue about Walter's eccentricities had actually managed to ease some of her embarrassment, realizing that he wasn't exactly mad at her, but mostly frustrated by the entire situation.

"I'm sorry," she repeated then, though she was apologizing for something completely different now, thinking about how she was forcing him to stay in that hotel room with a father he had been refusing to see so adamantly less than fifty hours ago. She was also well aware of the fact that she was eluding answering his inquiry about the meaning of her call. "This should really be only temporary; we will let you go back to your...activities as soon as we get a better understanding of what's happening."

Judging by the silence that followed, a heavy sound suddenly filled with the untold, she knew he was aware of her eluding skills, especially after the way she had ignored all of his questions about John earlier today.

And as it turned out, Peter Bishop was not one to let her get away that easily, deciding to get straight to the point with her instead by saying:

"John is dead, isn't he?"

Both the shock of hearing him say these words and their meaning itself caused her breathing to hitch in her throat, and she had to bite hard on the inside of her cheek to contain the sudden return of the burning sensation in her eyes. Wanting to preserve herself, she thought about eluding some more, maybe lie to him, for his sake as much as hers –he didn't need to be burdened with her disastrous love life more than he already was.

But she realized she didn't want to lie; his tone had been deeper, softer, too, and closing her eyes, Olivia could suddenly see him clearly, as he had been a few hours ago, standing outside Harvard in the cold Boston air. For the first time since Iraq, he had seemed to let another side of him show, if only in the gentle concern in his eyes and voice, or with that worry line between his eyes. It was almost as if…as if he was already starting to _care_ about her, somehow.

The thought was absolutely ridiculous, of course. No one _cared_ about her; she had fooled herself into thinking that John did, but she had been blinded, so naively blinded, tricked into loving him, seeing what she wanted to see, and believing his every lying word.

Olivia didn't want to lie to Peter anymore.

"Who told you?" she finally asked in a low, almost feeble voice.

"No one needs to tell me anything," he said calmly. "You might have conned the con man once, reading people is still one of my finest skills." After another pause, he added, more softly: "I'm sorry, Olivia."

And he really did sound sorry.

She stared at the vent in her ceiling, not really seeing it, now feeling each beat of her heart with painful intensity as it pulsed under her ribs. "He was a traitor," she said in a hollow voice, thinking she didn't deserve his kind words, and trying to sound as if she was completely detached from the matter. She felt a painful smile stretch her lips then, as her face constricted once more, in another kind of pain this time. "I guess he wasn't so worth it after all."

"Olivia…" Peter sighed her name in a way she had never heard her name be said before, by anyone, but she was too engulfed in her own sorrowful thoughts to realize it was the kind of sound she could get addicted to, and probably would someday. "Look…I know we've only known each other for a couple of days, and for all intent and purposes, we're nothing more than strangers, not to mention the fact that you're a cop and I'm a crook. But these couple of days have been insanely intense, even for me –and I'm a guy who likes thrill and excitement. What I'm trying to say is…you have a good heart. What you did for John was very brave, no matter the outcome."

She had to squeeze her eyes shut again, fighting to keep her breathing steady. "It was stupid."

"Well, there's a reason why everybody says people in love do the dumbest things," she could almost picture his small, smug smile. But his voice remained kind as he added: "Doesn't mean your actions weren't noble or creepily selfless. Though you _did_ strip down to your underwear in front of people you hardly knew, which incidentally, usually only happens after the second date for me, first one if I'm having a particularly good day, so I guess I have to revise that comment about us being nothing more than strangers."

"You're a jackass," she said, shaking her head, but in truth, she wasn't exactly annoyed at all.

"Yup, I've heard that one before. But you already knew that when you decided to call me in the middle of the night to distract me from my naked father. I definitely owe you a thank you."

If she were honest with herself, considering how the weight pressing down upon her chest seemed slightly less heavy, she would admit that it should be the other way around, that she was the one with a thank you to give. But words of this kind never came easy for her, especially not today; she thought he understood, though, that maybe he was hearing the quiet gratitude in her silence.

There really wasn't anything else to say after that, and they both knew it. And so, she simply wished him a goodnight, and hung up after he returned the sentiment.

She never even realized she was smiling softly.


	2. 1.02 The Same Old Story

There was a subtle yet definite change in the mood as Olivia drove them back to the lab.

When they had hopped into her car a few minutes ago, both her body and Peter's had been running on adrenaline; she had almost been able to feel the raw energy coming out of them in waves, especially confined as they were in the small interior of her car, none of them approving of the fact that they were now forced to sit still after their short yet intense bout of action. Quite honestly, she was glad their high was wearing off, even if it meant she now felt exceedingly exhausted.

Peter's demeanor had changed, too, and judging by what she could hear at this end the phone conversation he was having with his father, or the way he regularly sighed exaggeratedly, Dr. Walter Bishop was mainly responsible for his renewed grumpiness.

Hearing the two of them bicker was already becoming enough of a habit for her to quickly blur it out from her mind, and she went from distractingly listening to Peter's sarcastic remarks to thinking about what had just happened outside the warehouse.

In a matter of minutes, she had witnessed a man go from young adult to probably well over a hundred years of age, if his decrepit appearance had been any indication.

Considering how this case had started –with a newborn baby who had turned into an old man within a few hours, she shouldn't have been so shocked by what she had seen; but the truth was, she knew it would take more than a handful of cases like this one for her to get used to this, if she ever did. Part of her still grieved the somewhat normalcy she had known less than two weeks ago.

And it wasn't the only thing she was grieving.

Whenever she managed to fall asleep, she kept waking up from her restless sleep hoping this had all been a nightmare, a very, very bad dream, and that she would be able to go back to her former life. But this was her reality, now, and no matter how badly she wished she could maybe simply ask to be transferred to the other side of the country, she knew she owed it to herself to stay here and deal with this, to deal with this… _Pattern_.

Above all, she owed it to all these people who may have been hurt because of John's actions and her inability to see past her foolish love for him.

She snapped out of her gloomy reflections when Peter finally hung up his phone and shifted in his seat with an audible grumble. Throwing a quick glance sideways, she noted he was now displaying a scowling expression that made him look very childlike. Like her, he also seemed very tired. She felt a small and slightly amused smile start to pull at the corner of her lips, but she forced herself to keep a stoic face on.

"What did you do wrong this time?"She asked him, only half-jokingly.

"Walter apparently thinks it's a shame I let our murderer die. He somehow seems to think that if I had been with you instead of with the girl, I would have been able to stop his little aging problem with his help, and he would now have a 'live specimen' instead of a dead one. Let's ignore the fact that he was referring to a human being, here."

Olivia shook her head shortly, pursing her lips. "Don't listen to him. I saw it happen, there was absolutely nothing you could have done. And you saved that girl's life."

He chuckled darkly, and she threw another glance his way. He was staring out the window, his teeth clenched, as if her words didn't carry much meaning to him.

"You should be proud of yourself," she insisted, her voice oddly low and matter-of-factly. "I don't understand much of what is happening, but I know that without your quick thinking, she would have died."

His discomfort only seemed to grow at her words; he looked very thoughtful, now, and she forced herself to stop glancing at him to stare back at the road instead. She thought they were going to spend the rest of the way in this thick silence, which wasn't exactly uncomfortable, but definitely charged with too many things, both of them brooding over their own issues. But Peter eventually spoke again.

"I'm not used to saving people's lives," he admitted quietly; with another glance in his direction, she saw that he was scratching his stubble a bit awkwardly with one of his knuckles. He dropped his hand and looked at her, then, his gaze a bit too intense. She brought her eyes back to the road as he continued: "For most of my life, my IQ has mainly served me in doing less than admirable deeds. I just don't know how to feel about the fact that I've now helped save two people in ten days."

She didn't need to ask him who was the other person he had saved. John's face immediately flashed in her mind, and her grip instinctively tightened on the steering wheel, her entire body tensing. Peter obviously realized what he had implied right away, because he grunted again.

"I'm sorry, Olivia, that was a stupid thing to say."

"It's okay," she promptly said, in that same, emotionless voice, shaking her head. "You did save his life, you and your father both did. His death was a completely independent incident."

She could have snorted at her own words, if they hadn't made her feel so sick, suddenly, feeling the all too familiar burning sensation in the back of her throat; it was the burn of bile, the burn of betrayal.

Once again, she felt overwhelmed with that sense of failure, of being indirectly responsible for whatever wrongs John had been doing for the past twelve months, right under her nose.

When she felt the feather-light touch of Peter's fingertips on her right hand, which was still clenching the wheel in a death grip, her honest surprise caused all of her bitter thoughts to promptly scatter away, just like it had when they had been sitting on that bench, earlier today.

And just like they had back then, Peter's fingers didn't linger, quickly moving away; they had brushed her skin just long enough for a shiver to form under it, rippling through the flesh of her arm and down her spine. She threw him a glance she knew was cautious, but when their eyes met, all she saw in his was honest sympathy and grave comprehension. She remembered his words, then.

" _Knowing that Walter's work is responsible for all those murders... I just want you to know that you're not alone here."_

She had to look away, troubled. Her hands had finally relaxed their grip, though, and the acid had receded back in her stomach. The silence was once again heavy with unspoken words; it felt slightly more disquieting this time…but not necessarily in a bad way.

"Thank you," she told him, then, with a sharp nod of her head, briefly pursing the corner of her lips. Her voice finally sounded like her own again. "For what you said earlier today."

As he replied with a friendly and warm "You're welcome," she knew there was more she had wanted to say, and she was pretty sure he knew it, too.

She wished she could have added: ' _And for what it's worth, I want you to know that you're not alone either'_. But somehow, she felt that it would be too dangerous to go _there_ , too unwise of her to let herself relate too much to this man, who after all was still a stranger for the most part.

Although in more than one way, she was already all too aware of the fact that thinking of Peter as a mere stranger was as ridiculous as thinking of her former life as something she could eventually get back.

She couldn't explain it, but she definitely felt it.

She was firmly decided on not thinking of him as anything more than a 'helpful civilian consultant', though. She had seen what tended to happen when you got too close to someone you worked with. After all, all Peter needed to do now was sign a few forms, and he might just get a card that would give him this official title.

' _Peter Bishop, Civilian Consultant to Homeland_ Security'.

That was if he accepted to stick around long enough for the bureau to approve his credentials, evidently. Given how his patience with his father appeared to be getting thinner and thinner by the hour, she highly doubted he would stay much longer.

And yet, driving the rest of the way in definite silence, now, Olivia found herself hoping that he would.

As imprudent as this thought might be, she really hoped he would.


	3. 1.03 The Ghost Network

There was something truly mesmerizing in watching Peter play the piano.

As he filled the empty spaces of the lab with soft jazz notes, Olivia kept her eyes on him, soon realizing that it might be the first time in the few weeks they'd known each other that she allowed herself to really _watch_ him. She was usually too focused on whatever crisis they were dealing with at the time to fully pay attention to him, her head often aching from both lack of sleep and the constant flow of new, bizarre information she had to take in and accept as valid.

There also was the fact that whenever she looked at him, he was always prompt to look right back at her, and she was all too aware of the unsettling power his stares had on her, something she did not approve of at all. Obviously.

Right now, his eyes remained cast down, following the fluid movements of his hands, allowing Olivia to openly watch and observe.

Even though he was the one in control of the melody, he also seemed to be carried away by it to some extent, his body swaying almost imperceptibly as his fingers travelled up and down the keyboard with an ease that was nothing short of disconcerting. Music apparently came as easily to him as the overly complicated science principles he often discussed with his father.

Said father had been standing next to her at the piano until a minute ago, when he had suddenly straightened up and said, quite cheerfully: " _Oh, I can feel a bowel movement approaching. Jazz always had a wonderful laxative effect on me_ ," and he was gone.

Though Peter's initial reaction to Walter's always so tactful remarks had been a smirk and a slow shake of his head, Olivia could now see the change in his stature. More than that, she could _hear_ the way his thoughts were shifting, the melody having transitioned smoothly from his rendition of ' _Someone To Watch Over me_ ' to something else, something that required him to play lower on the keyboard.

Olivia didn't know much about music –her musical knowledge didn't go farther than the six months she had spent playing the oboe as a kid, but she could definitely tell that whatever Peter was now playing, it was much darker sounding than his previous jazz piece, though it remained mostly slow and soft.

With her forearms resting on top of the piano, she felt the vibrations of the instrument, each note shooting minuscule shivers through her limbs. In response to his change of repertoire, her own body tensed up slightly, unable to move her eyes away from his face, which was darkening with every passing second.

"Doesn't it bother you?" Peter eventually asked. He was still avoiding looking up at her, keeping his gaze on his moving fingers.

"What?" She asked back, even though she thought she knew what this was about.

"The things my father did before he was committed. How detached he appears to be about it all."

Olivia didn't need to ask him if it bothered _him_. She had been right, now remembering walking in on the two men 'arguing' over the fact that Roy McComb wouldn't have become a Fringe case himself if Walter hadn't experimented on him in the first place.

She had seen glimpses of just how deep Peter's anger seemed to run on a few occasions ever since she had forced him into Ste Claire, but it had never reached the intensity she had witnessed during that argument; he had been literally _shouting_ at his father.

She had a feeling the same kind of emotions was what was fueling Peter's irritation at the moment. It was more than a feeling, to be honest; he was still avoiding her eyes, and the melody he was playing had become plainly gloomy now, his jaw set in a way she was already recognizing as a sign of intense contrariety.

"How he used people as _guinea pigs_ ," Peter added, both his words and his notes suddenly louder, making 'guinea pigs' sound plainly ominous.

In response, Olivia was now tapping the tip of her fingers together at a frantic pace, an unconscious display of her own discomfort, at the subject itself, and at the fact that she knew she couldn't really offer him any kind of comfort. She opted for honesty instead.

"Yeah, it bothers me," she admitted, because it did.

She certainly did not approve of human experimentation, but she knew it would have been quite hypocritical of her to burn Walter at the stake because of it now, considering that his past experiments had been the reason why she had sought his help in the first place.

"But he's also helping," she reminded Peter, trying to sound calm and composed, though she was inevitably affected by his mood. "You saw what he was able to do, today; it probably saved a lot of lives."

The melody had not only become louder, it was also faster, now, growing steadily stronger and stronger, like an upcoming, gigantic wave that was gaining more devastating momentum with every chord he played.

"How many lives did he ruin, though?" Peter insisted, and his tone was now very low, louder as well, so he could be heard over his booming tune. "I mean, sure, he was able to give Roy a somewhat normal life back, and that's grand, he deserves a strawberry milkshake as a reward for it; but that poor guy wouldn't have had to go through that kind of trauma to begin with if Walter hadn't made him an unknowing victim of his egocentric quest for godlike powers in the first place."

Olivia was mesmerized for sure now, but it had become a very different kind of enthrallment, one she knew she really didn't have any control over. She couldn't have moved her eyes away from him even if she had tried, her every sense captivated by the lament that was now thriving through the lab.

Peter seemed unstoppable, lost in a different universe, having apparently forgotten she was even there as he continued his frenzy:

"From the way he acts, you can tell he thinks that if he pretends what he did to these people isn't important or relevant, it makes him less accountable for his actions. But the truth is, he had an impact on many lives, a bad one, a _rotten_ one, and some people simply weren't strong enough to survive the kind of burden he imposed on them, and he should be man enough to take the blame for all the pain he caused."

His fingers slipped on the last of his words, resulting in a loud and eerie dissonance that sent a different kind of chills down Olivia's spine. She also started to breathe again, unaware until now that she hadn't been doing so through the last stretch of his monologue.

Peter abruptly stopped after that, both his ranting and his mad playing, his hands falling limply on his laps as his entire body slumped. Something clicked in Olivia's mind, then, and she thought she understood in part what this was about, a recent conversation they'd had fleetingly flashing in her head.

" _So, where's your mother now?"_

" _That's a story for another time."_

Why hadn't he simply answered? A simple ' _She's not in Boston anymore_ ,' or maybe something like ' _She's traveling, probably somewhere in Europe right now_ ' would have done the trick. Being quite the expert herself when it came to eluding people's questions when they touched on matters that were either too personal or too painful –or both, she was afraid she knew why he hadn't answered.

Obviously, it was intuition more than anything else that led her to think that his mother was the real reason behind Peter's sudden expression of resentment and fury, but Olivia had learned years ago to fully trust her instincts, as they were rarely wrong.

One thing for sure, she wouldn't dare ask him _now_ if she had guessed right. For one thing, she wasn't even sure she could safely open her mouth and speak without causing him to snap again, though he did look mostly disheartened at the moment. Instead, she made a mental note to try and find out what had become of his mother; she would surely give herself plenty of valid reasons at the time for doing so, excusing the fact that she was probably probing where she had no right to probe.

Peter seemed to be coming out of his odd trance, now, shaking his head a bit dramatically, as if to make it look like it was all unimportant and ridiculous. He finally raised his head and met her eyes, offering her an apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry," he said, and even though he did a good job at sounding derisive, his voice was slightly too hoarse, and the smile didn't reach his eyes. "Obviously, I've got some father issues."

She tilted her head with a pinched smile of her own, once again finding the intensity of his gaze almost more troubling than the looming melody he had been playing a minute ago. She opened her mouth to answer something, though she had no idea what she could or should say.

' _Who doesn't?_ ', maybe? Or: ' _I can relate'_?

The truth was, both his monologue and the dark tune that had overwhelmed them both had caused unexpected thoughts of her step-father to unleash themselves in her mind again, something she wished more than anything else she could control, but couldn't. Not at that time of the year, anyway.

She knew all too well that this kind of unwilling thinking would happen more and more frequently during the next three weeks, the most random things bringing her twenty years back, back to when she was nine and so _angry_. And then the day would come when she would find yet another card in her mail, and she would blame herself and the entire world for that third bullet she was never able to shoot.

Mostly, she would blame herself.

As it turned out, she didn't have to say anything at all, her cell phone starting to ring with impeccable timing. She apologized and averted her eyes, both gladly and remorsefully, picking up the buzzing device from her hip and walking away from the piano.

Soon, she was completely immersed in some legal discussion with Charlie, fully focused on the matter at hand, relieved for such distraction from her inner demons –and Peter's. And yet, as she paced the lab and talked, part of her was acutely aware of the fact that in another part of the room, Peter had started playing again.

This new tune was soft and quite beautiful, though it rang with a sadness and melancholy that would have brought another flow of bittersweet memories to her mind and heart if she had been paying attention to it.

Had she asked Walter, who had finally stepped back into the lab and was now listening to his son's melody from the top of the stairs with a curled hand clenched to his chest, he would have been able to tell her that this had been his late wife's favorite song, one that Peter had written her when he was only ten.

Olivia never asked.

After that, Peter seldom played the piano again.


	4. 1.04 The Arrival

As they walked to the elevator, there was no denying the fact that Olivia felt positively better –though she would have denied having previously felt bad, just like she would deny the existence of a fluttering relief within her chest now.

She walked in front of Peter, who was noticeably slowed down by his injuries, his every movement lacking his typical energy, the one most men in the prime of their life gave out without even trying; it had been replaced by the visible and very unpleasant quivering stirs of pain in his muscles and bones.

Olivia was well aware of his physical condition, and yet, she wouldn't have considered even for a second decreasing her resolute pace to match his sluggish stroll, let alone _fall behind him_ so he could get some of his manly pride back, or something of the sort.

She took the lead like she always did, as unconsciously as she inhaled and exhaled air, though she was maybe doing that a bit faster than usual -her breathing was affected by the rhythm of her heart, which _had_ quickened slightly. Due to her sturdy marching, she inevitably reached the elevator first, and alone. It wasn't until she had pressed the call button that she realized there was no one at her side, or directly behind her, and she turned around.

Peter, still quite a lengthy distance away, was making his way to her with a small limp and a look on his battered face that spoke openly of how unamused he felt about all this. His brow was more furrowed than ever, and his gaze was dark and stormy. Olivia wasn't in the least intimidated by that kind of grumpy expression; she lived in a man's world, and she had been given that kind of look by men more than once, generally shortly after they realized that she was determined on standing her ground on her own two female feet, and probably secretly planning on kicking as many asses as possible while doing so.

She _did_ feel a pang of sincere empathy towards Peter, though, knowing that his turbulent mood wasn't caused by his bruised ego at watching her strut in front of him. It had more to do with his aching body, and the bitter disappointment that had come with the unavoidable realization that had obviously dawned on him tonight: he couldn't leave Boston.

Olivia wouldn't let herself think about _that_ too much, though, because while Peter was disappointed, she definitely wasn't -not anymore. Also, it might explain why her heart was beating a bit too fast right now, or why the disgruntled feelings that had been hovering over her head for the past two days suddenly seemed to have dissolved into thin air, like an unexpected sunbeam cutting through a cloudy sky.

She had too much on her mind, too many things weighting on her shoulders and heart, to be allowed to feel anything remotely close to 'content', but all things considered, hearing Peter announce that he would be staying instead of leaving was definitely on the plus side at the moment.

The elevator's doors had opened by now, and she kept them from closing again by putting an arm in their way, offering Peter another smile as she did so, one that was more apologetic than anything else, her head tilted. He just kept on brooding, advancing slowly but surely, and she actually played nice by letting him step first into the car.

As she pressed the P2 button, he leaned heavily against the back wall with an audible grunt. When she glanced back at him while the doors closed, she wasn't surprised in the least to find him still staring at her, displaying that same dark expression on his face. The purplish spots spreading under his skin was adding to the dramatic effect.

Now that she could see his face more closely, she noticed that behind all the glumness, there seemed to be a hint of incredulity and awe in his gaze as he looked at her. She averted her eyes quickly enough; she was becoming better at holding his gaze, as if answering a silent dare that kept passing between the two of them, but in situations like this one, when they found themselves confined in a small elevator for example, she would rather not be unnecessarily reckless.

Even by looking steadily at the closed doors in front of her, she couldn't get over the sensation of being stared at, and really, she'd never had much patience for _that_ kind of 'games'.

"What?" She eventually asked, throwing another glance over her shoulder.

Even though she was doing a splendid job at masking most of her slight discomfort, as she always did, she was also aware of the fact that Peter was indeed good at reading her, inexorably getting better at it by the day. Three weeks working by her side, and he could already tell she wasn't comfortable being stuck in cramped places with him...just like she could tell by the small returning smirk on his lips that he was getting a kick out of it.

The smirk never turned into one of his cheeky grins, though, his mood still too dark for him to be completely amused by anything right now. His gaze did remain intense as he eyed her with that same, odd expression of wonder and skepticism.

"Remember when I joked about how I was developing an inferiority complex by being around you?" he finally answered, with his own question; when she merely answered herself with a stoic blink of her eyes, wary of where this was leading, he continued: "Well, I think the complex is blooming into real insecurities now."

She squinted at him. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it means," he chuckled darkly, though not unkindly, offering her a tired, defeated smile, shrugging his shoulders. "You're made of some seriously tough stuffs."

She tilted her chin at him again, followed by a curt shake of her head that made her ponytail bounce, pursing her lips, silently refusing to listen to him praise her when she really hadn't done anything worth being praised for. Seriously, in the grand scheme of things, what had she done today, beside let Walter drug Astrid, let Peter get abducted, and let the cylinder disappear from right under her nose?

The whole car jolted then as it came to a stop, and the doors slid open once more. They both ignored it, still staring at each other intently.

"Give yourself some credit," she told him a bit reproachfully. "You were tortured today."

This earned her another humorless chuckle from him. "I was taken while literally trying to run away from the city because I don't like being forced into dealing with my unresolved father issues, or with any of my issues for that matter. And the only reason why I'm staying now is because I can't stand feeling outsmarted by whatever the hell is happening here. I'm sure you can appreciate the idea that it's a bit intimidating to be a selfish being when standing next to someone like you."

Under his usual self-derision, Olivia knew he was being sincere. She also knew he was being too hard on himself. She remembered very well the conversation they'd had only a day ago, when he had told her he wouldn't be staying any longer because he didn't feel needed. He had admitted then that the main reason why he had stayed here in the first place wasn't for his father, but because he had felt bad for _her_ and had wanted to help.

She couldn't think of a less selfish reason for staying in a city where a guy named 'Fat Eddie' -or maybe was it Big Eddie?- had your name on the wrong kind of list.

And as she thought about this, she felt those warm flutters beginning to emerge again, the ones she was always prompt to ignore or chase away, the ones that had morphed into her own brand of bitter disappointment when she had thought him gone for good this afternoon after his last row with Walter.

" _The truth is, you don't need me here."_

" _That isn't the truth."_

She was too proud to ever admit it out loud, but these past few weeks, she had appreciated his support probably just as much as Walter had enjoyed being around his son again, no matter how often they got into booming arguments. What was stopping her was also the fact that admitting this to him would probably make things a bit too… _awkward_ between them, for lack of better words.

And Olivia did not need any more awkward or odd in her life right now, especially taking into account how she had recently started hallucinating receiving calls from her dead lover, for example.

She didn't speak any of these words, and yet, she once again had a feeling that the stare they exchanged said quite enough.

She smirked, then, to dissipate the tension more than anything else; she had let the flutters expend to the point of making her blood feel warmer within her veins, fully appreciating that one irrefutable truth:

He was staying in Boston.

"Ah well, you do seem like a smart guy," she told him eventually, because she had to say something in response to his ridiculous praising. She also wanted to prove him he wasn't the only one who could be cheeky. "Who knows, if you stick around long enough, I might start to rub off on you."

And on those words, she escaped the elevator.

First, of course.


	5. 1.05 Power Hungry

The air felt incredibly thick around her, thicker than it ever felt when she was deep under the University, working in Walter's lab.

That occurrence was odd in itself, considering that she was not in the basement, but outside for the most part. The sun was streaming through the archways, and only minutes ago, she had been feeling the faint caress of a soft wind on her face as she walked to the vending machine. She knew that almost for a fact, as she remembered briefly thinking about how the temperature seemed to have started to drop, the way thoughts often wandered randomly; the breeze had been almost chilly, the young fall season already advancing towards winter.

She should still have been able to feel that same breeze now, made even colder against the clammy, feverish skin of her face. She didn't; she didn't feel much of anything at all to be honest, except for that oppressing sensation that made her feel like she was suffocating slowly. It was as if her nerves had gone dead, as numbness had taken over her body.

Despite this eerie lack of sensations that wasn't completely unfamiliar either, Olivia kept on walking. She kept on walking through a passageway that seemed to be getting darker by the second, her vision just as affected as the rest of her senses. Everything in her was urging her to get out in the open, away from these walls she was sure had started to close in on her. Her entire body was shaking slightly now, but she was barely aware of it.

She just needed to get into the open air.

"Olivia, you sure you're okay?"

Peter's voice cut through the thick fog in her mind, and she instinctively turned her head towards him. Once again, she had started walking away without waiting for him. This time, she had been solely directed by her need to get outside, while he momentarily stood frozen in incredulity, studying her with worried eyes as she hurried past him, obviously sensing that she had just experienced something big, but having no way of knowing what.

He had caught up with her fast enough; physically, he had already regained all of his strength, the only traces remaining from his abduction being the dark bruises on his face and the bandages on his wrists. Olivia now realized that he was standing extremely close to her, the kind of closeness she had experienced with John a minute ago. He had clearly forgotten all about personal space, or chosen to ignore it -like he had done on a few occasions before.

Normally, she would have been taken aback by his proximity, and definitely more than a little bothered by it, but she barely gave it a thought at that instant. She was still too shaken by what had just happened to pay attention to Peter on an entirely conscious level, not really seeing him, or feeling him, as he walked too close to her.

Her heart was still beating way too fast inside her chest, almost deafening against her ears, and her breathing was too labored, though she fought hard to keep it at a steady pace so not to alert her partner even more. She brought a quivering hand up, briefly rubbing her forehead in a restless gesture; she felt the damp quality of her skin under her fingertips, not completely registering it at all either.

"I'm fine," she repeated, and her voice sounded ghostly even to her own ears. "I just need air."

She kept on walking until they finally reached an opening that led them to the courtyard. The feel of the early October sun on her skin was almost wondrous, but as she should have expected, the sensation of slowly suffocating did not simply disappear. Not entirely sure her cottony legs were going to hold her up much longer if she didn't manage to get a grip on herself soon, she promptly leaned against one of the stony pillars.

She knew this wasn't simply caused by shock. She didn't think she would ever get used to seeing John materialize in front of her, knowing he had been dead for over a month, but even if there had been shock this time like there had been shock when he had first popped up in her kitchen, it wasn't the same petrifying kind of shock anymore. Some desperate part of her might even be looking forward to his apparitions.

She had so many unanswered questions, and despite her best efforts, she still hadn't figured out how to deal with that shamed, humiliated hole he had carved in her life and into her heart when he had died in her arms.

What she was experiencing right now was her body's way of telling her that it was fed up with all the ordeals she was putting herself through, physically and psychologically, all the while completely neglecting to eat or sleep. After all, she had gone to get a soda in the first place instead of following the others out in the yard to prep the birds because she had started to feel that familiar and unpleasing tingling sensation in her limbs, premise of what she was feeling now, a warning sign that her energy level was getting alarmingly low.

She had tried to remember the last time she had eaten –or slept for that matter, and couldn't come up with anything except for that umpteenth cup of sour coffee she had drunk a few hours ago. The coke she had gone to buy was meant to give her the burst of energy she would need to get through whatever came next.

Obviously, she had promptly forgotten all about the soda when her dead lover had paid her another surprise visit and had started kissing her.

Thinking of John's apparition efficiently worsened her physical distress, and she was suddenly incredibly grateful for the hard stone supporting her weight; she was by no mean the fainting kind –unless it was injury related and she got blown up into the air, causing her to hit her head a bit too hard, for example. The last time her body had given up on her like that had had to be that time years ago, back in her Academy days, when she used to work herself too hard. She had (tried to) put herself through a fifteen miles run while sleep deprived, and food deprived, not to mention the academic stress she was undergoing at the time, all because she felt she was lacking physical stamina. It probably had been in October, too, because October _never_ was a good month.

At some point that evening, after she had run quite a few miles despite it all, all strength had simply gone out of her at once, as if her brain had decided it couldn't bear controlling her limbs any longer, and after briefly pondering over how _odd_ that sensation of being completely bodiless was, she had crumpled to the ground. It definitely wasn't one of her proudest moments, but at least, no one had been there to witness how she had lost the battle against her own traitorous body.

She couldn't afford to let the numbness win today, not when Peter was standing right there in front of her. Thanks to the many years she had spent perfecting her skills when it came to masking her most distressing internal turmoils, she knew she might not even look half as bad as she felt; without these skills, Peter would probably have already forced her to sit down and hooked her up with an IV solution of some kind. The fact that she could barely stand on her own feet right now was telling him more than enough, though.

He did speak again, then, but she was too focused on _not_ fainting to be able to quite make out his words; she simply assumed he was expressing his concern over her unusual behavior.

"I'm fine," she repeated once more, her voice too weak, too distant. "It's just a dizzy spell; I think I might be getting a bit hypoglycemic."

If her eyes had been open, she would have seen the small, unamused smile that crept across his lips, then. There wasn't anything worth smiling about in this situation, but it was the kind of smile that expressed an odd kind of endearment, along with some exasperation; he obviously wasn't surprised in the least by the fact that she was denying how bad she really felt, or by what was causing this.

"When was the last time you ate?" he asked her, a bit sternly. "Or slept? And I don't mean a forty minutes nap, I mean a full eight hour-sleep kind of night."

Had she felt any better, Olivia would have scoffed at that, and would have told him she probably hadn't slept eight hours in a row since she was a toddler. She didn't remember much of her childhood before the age of seven, but insomnia had already been part of her life back then, and undoubtedly had been for a while.

She didn't have any energy to spare for that kind of confidence at the moment, though, and rambling about her childhood would have been utterly pointless -as if he cared, really. Which was why she simply shook her head with an impatient frown, keeping her eyes closed, silently and grudgingly admitting that she couldn't remember when she had last given her body some rest or food, all the while expressing her annoyance over such trivial matters.

She _had_ to look at him when she heard a peculiar sound in front of her; opening her eyes, she saw he had just unwrapped a chocolate bar, the kind that was stuffed with caramel. He was now handing it to her, and the look on his face expressed clearly that he would not take no for an answer.

"Eat this," he told her categorically, though his voice remained lower and gentler than his usual tone. "I always have a handful of those on me because Walter needs his sugar rush probably as much as he needs to pump himself full of psychedelics twice a day."

Again, part of her wanted to protest, highly disliking being pampered in any way; she doubted she could eat anything at all anyway, her stomach having shrunk into a tight, cramped knot. But Peter's stare was inflexible, and she fleetingly thought he might force the candy down her throat if she refused –that was until she reminded him of the fact she had a gun on her hip of course. They could both be very stubborn about this, that much was clear; she quickly decided she had already made them waste enough time as it was.

She took the chocolate out of his hand, and actually gulped down half of it in only two hungry bites. The candy was way too sweet on her tongue, promptly adding faint nausea to the list of unpleasant feelings she was experiencing, and the caramel stuck to her teeth in a way she had always disliked. Despite the negative aspects of it, she did start to feel better only seconds after swallowing all of that artificial sugar.

Peter let her finish the chocolate bar before he spoke again.

"Something happened to you in there," he said; it wasn't a question. He kept his voice low, having probably realized a while back that it was the safest and most efficient way to talk to her in that kind of situation. "I'm not going to probe, because I know you won't say anything unless you really want to but…are _you_ okay?"

She had averted her eyes again, chewing on the last of the caramel stuck in her teeth; now that she was feeling more like herself again, her embarrassment at having behaved so pathetically in front of him had worsened accordingly. There was genuine concern in his tone, though, and when she dared look up at him again, she saw the same worry in his eyes.

 _Lies_ , a voice whispered in her ear, and that voice sounded like a combination of every man who had broken her heart in the past.

Despite that warning whisper, Olivia briefly considered being honest with him. She imagined telling him about seeing John, about seeing John more than once, and about how _he_ kept on telling her that he hadn't betrayed her. About how he said he would prove it, that he loved her, _always_ , and how it caused wounds that had barely started to close to reopen.

She had told Charlie, after all, and Charlie had been incredibly understanding, like he always was, insisting that she shouldn't beat herself up because she hadn't been able to get over the trauma of what had happened in only a few weeks.

But she already felt too ashamed over the way her body had been the one betraying her today, she didn't think she could stand talking about John with Peter. The comfort he silently seemed willing to offer her didn't seem fake at all, and it was almost too tempting.

She would hate herself later for giving in.

And so, she didn't.

She shook her head instead, forcing a smile on her lips, knowing that it wouldn't fool him, but doing it anyway. "I'm okay," she lied again. "The candy helped, thanks." After a short and tensed pause, she added, very reluctantly: "Could we just…pretend this never happened?"

His own face swiftly broke into a soft smile. "You mean, go on with our normal lives and go follow a bunch of tracking pigeons in the hope that they'll lead us to a man who has such an uniquely strong electromagnetic signature he can levitate?"

As it was often the case with Peter, she found herself stifling an unexpected raising chuckle, the tired kind, but a chuckle nonetheless. "Precisely," she confirmed with a curt nod, her embarrassment already receding.

"In that case, the last ten minutes never happened," Peter said, amiably enough, accepting her need to keep on pretending she was unbreakable and never victim of human weaknesses like dizzy spells. "I don't know about you, though, but I could use some coffee for the trip. You should go join the others, I'll get us some."

She was more grateful than she would ever admit for the fact that he really _was_ dropping it, despite his badly disguised attempt at pampering her again by offering to get her some caffeine. She didn't comment on it, though, because she could definitely use it on top of the sugar now running through her veins.

And so, she silently thanked him with another nod of her head and a pinched smile, before walking to her car.


	6. 1x06 The Cure

Olivia had first tried alcohol to answer a dare. As usual, the challenge hadn't come from one of her peers.

She had been very young, and at the time, her life had been a succession of dares she gave to herself. She had learned quickly that when you regularly had to go through tough situations, facing each of them as particularly tricky dares usually helped, especially when you were a child who couldn't stand to fail, at anything.

Drinking alcohol had been no different.

She'd known it was dangerous, and that she wasn't supposed to do it, because it was a 'grownup thing'. But dares always tended to involve some danger, and often implied that something forbidden needed to be done. In that case, the danger had come from the fact alone that the alcohol had been her stepfather's.

In her young mind, it had been clear that the liquor played a big part in the transformation she witnessed almost on a daily basis, changing his grumpy and moody self into a violent monster with bloodshot eyes and cruel hands, who yelled ugly lies to her mom and broke many things, objects as well as bones.

She had needed to try it. She had needed to know if the weird amber liquid really was some kind of evil elixir, like the ones she sometimes read about in her books. If it had been, she obviously would have gotten in a lot of trouble by drinking it, but again, she had been young, just a child. She hadn't been grasping the big picture in its entirety; she had seen just enough to want and find an explanation for the destructive pattern that made up her life.

That night, he had left the house a while ago already, like he usually did after he got angry, and both Rachel and her mom had finally fallen asleep, curled up together in a bed. Eight year old Olivia had gone back to the kitchen to clean up the mess –two dinner plates shattered on the tiles tonight, plus the other two that needed to be washed. Her gaze had eventually stopped on his whiskey bottle, still open on the counter.

When she had picked it up, it had only been to close it at first. The smell that had reached her nose had been enough to disgust her, like it always did whenever she had to pour him a shot, because she knew what it meant. She knew that by his third glass, he would probably throw it across the room. Even if she were lucky enough not to have to console her mother in the aftermath of his transformation, she knew she would still have to spend at least twenty minutes sweeping the floor thoroughly so Rachel didn't cut her feet on broken glass.

Olivia had never been particularly neat, but if there were a mess to be cleaned, she _had_ to clean it.

That time, when she had picked up his open bottle, beyond its initial sickening waft, the smell had also been enticing, _daring_ her to raise it to her lips, really, to finally find out why it brought so much violence in her house. She had lowered her face, placing her nose over the opening and breathing in deeply. It had caused her nostrils and throat to instantly burn, and she had recoiled with a grimace.

How could anyone want to _drink_ something so foul-smelling?

It had only kindled her curiosity, of course, and before long, she was taking her first swallow. She had almost chocked on it, gagging right away. She hadn't thrown up, though. She had waited instead. She had waited for the anger to rise up in her scorched throat, for that fury she often felt towards her stepfather whenever he hit her mom to come back, expecting it to be amplified by the alcohol, making her want to yell insults and hit people.

It hadn't happened.

All she had felt that night was a funny kind of numbness, and a very peculiar warmth that had spread through her chest once the burning sensation had subsided a bit.

She had tried again, a few days later, and again after that, until the motive behind her dare had changed. It had gone from doing something forbidden, to doing something _he_ did too, except that she had been the strong one, in that case. When it came to drinking whiskey, she obviously had the upper hand: unlike him, the alcohol didn't turn her into a monster. And just like the liquid itself, this knowledge made her feel the oddest kind of serenity, even if it was just for a handful of minutes.

There also was something quite addictive about this sensation; it made all of her aches seem more…distant. Starting so young and so regularly probably was what had caused her to become so resistant to potent alcohol through the years. It rarely made her drunk, but it always soothed her for a brief few moments

This was most definitely the reason why Olivia quickly made her way to her liquor cabinet that night, after finding the card on her apartment's floor, walking there in a haze that was as familiar to her as the strong pounding of her heart against her sternum.

She felt the adrenaline that was now running through her veins, causing her fingers to tingle as she reached for a bottle that was more than half empty. That burst of energy fought against the other kind of numbness that had invaded her limbs the moment she had spotted the white envelop at her feet.

She had thrown it on her kitchen table, where it would stay until she found it in herself to pick it up again and put it in the trash, where it belonged. It might have to wait until she got a few glasses down, though.

Outwardly, she looked as composed and calm as can be. Her movements were not rushed, being actually slightly slower than the usually swift pace that was present in everything she did; her face was a mask of cold apathy, her gaze unfocused, almost indifferent, and her breathing remained perfectly controlled.

It was all an act, a reaction she had taught herself to assimilate and display years ago, when she had realized that few things were more damaging than letting whatever was devouring your insides take over and get the best of you. She appeared to be unbothered, but inwardly, something frightening and powerful was trashing, a combination of old anger and familiar dread.

No matter what, there was no fear.

Nothing scared her much anymore.

She was definitely on edge, though, her every sense alert as she drank her first shot of whiskey in one go, keeping her eyes on her door. What was particularly eerie this year was that the card had been _slipped_ inside her apartment, not mailed to her. There was no stamp, which meant that 'someone' had had to crouch down on the other side of her door, and push the envelope inside.

Who knew, she might actually have walked right past him outside. Maybe he had been hiding in the shadows, watching her every move while she remained completely oblivious to his presence.

Her gun, securely placed in its holster, felt heavy against her hip now. Pouring herself another glass and quickly bringing her eyes back to the door, she found herself picturing with perfect clarity what she would do if it were to suddenly burst open, and _he_ happened to be standing right there in her doorway. She wouldn't hesitate much, that's for sure.

She would pull the trigger on him for the third time, only twenty years too late. This time, she would not miss his head.

This thought instantly brought up a very recent memory, and she was suddenly remembering a bit too vividly how a man had actually killed himself in front of her eyes, earlier today, by pressing a gun under his chin and shooting a bullet through his skull.

She decided right then that she had seen enough splattered brain matter for one day.

As Olivia lowered her glass again, not without taking another swig of alcohol first, something caught her attention from the corner of her eye; it wasn't enough to make her swiftly turn around and pull out her gun, but it did however offer her a welcomed distraction.

Her answering machine's light was blinking steadily, and the number on it read ' **1** '. She walked to it right away, all too glad to be looking away from her front door, and pressed the _play_ button.

She wasn't surprised to hear Rachel's voice.

"Hey Liv, it's me. I know you don't like to celebrate your birthday, but I made a huge mistake today. I kinda let it slip that it was _indeed_ your birthday, and I now have a very eager and stubborn four year old who refuses to eat her lunch unless I let her call you. Don't hate me, she's doing it out of love."

After some noisy shuffling, the very piercing and excited voice of her niece came on. "Aunt Liv! Mommy told me it was your birthday, so I have to sing you happy birthday!" And without further ado, Ella leapt into the song, which she sang all the way through from the top of her lungs, only slightly out of tune.

Almost miraculously, Olivia found herself actually smiling a little after only a few seconds, her heart swelling at the sweetness that had always characterized her niece. It was impossible not to be affected by such an enthusiastic and lovely gesture.

After letting Ella then ramble for a minute or two about all the drawings she had made for her aunt, Rachel had obviously gotten the phone back. "Like I said, don't hate me, I had to make sure she would eat at some point today. And anyway, it's been way too long since we've last talked. What's happening in your life? Is everything alright? Call me, okay? Love you." And after a final beep, the room was quiet again.

All of the sudden, Olivia felt very tired, her adrenaline rush long gone now, having been replaced by a fatigue that felt bone-deep. She let herself fall on her couch, still clenching what remained of her whiskey, while she pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand.

On top of everything else, she now felt guilty thinking about her sister and niece; it _had_ been a while since she had called them. She had been going through so much, lately, she had a hard time figuring out how to deal with what had become of her life these past two months. How was she supposed to explain it to _Rachel_ , when she barely understood it herself? There was also the fact that she wasn't even allowed to tell her anything specific at all.

Especially not on her birthday.

As surprising as it may sound, despite all these years and all these cards, her sister still remained completely unaware of their stepfather's annual sick ritual. Olivia had always made sure she would be shielded from this.

It was her burden to carry, her mess to clean; her little sister didn't need to be dragged into this.

No one did.

Up until a few hours ago, Charlie had actually been the first and only person who had known about the cards. The only reason why she had told him was because a year ago, the white envelop had come at work, and he had been right there to witness her reaction. He hadn't needed to probe much; after years and years of suffering through this on a day she should be spending celebrating, it had just poured out of her. It had felt somewhat liberating, to open up to him.

Charlie had always been different from all the men she'd had in her life so far. He had always felt…safe, in a comforting way she had never really known before. Sometimes, he felt more like a father to her than a friend, always there to encourage her and guide her, never judging her. Since the day they had met, and after all these months they had spent working together, she had come to trust him implicitly.

The fact that she had confided in Peter so fast, when they had known each other for hardly two _months_ , didn't make any sense at all.

Unlike Charlie, he hadn't seen the card, hadn't even known it was her birthday, hadn't seen the look on her face when she had realized that her stepfather still managed to bruise her no matter what, the way he did every year on that day. All Peter had done was ask her to stop blowing off steam on him, since he had been the unfair victim of her sour mood all day long.

Next thing she knew, it was pouring out of her again, the whole story, even details she hadn't shared with Charlie. She had told him about the look, about how she had failed. No matter how many times she had tried to convince herself otherwise, she couldn't deny the fact that Peter was different, too.

He was different on a whole new level, though, one she didn't really comprehend, one that unsettled her more than she could explain. For a few hours after revealing her secret to him, she had actually managed to make herself believe that this was exactly the same kind of trusting relationship she had with Charlie.

It had worked, up until that moment they had shared in front of his hotel. She could lie to herself all she wanted, Charlie had most definitely never looked at her that way.

" _Happy Birthday."_

His wishes had been warm and heartfelt, because he _knew_ what it meant for her, not to get that card. And for the first time in a very long time, she had allowed herself to think that this birthday might actually not be that bad, after all.

It may also have had something to do with the way Peter had been staring at her again, with that unrivaled intensity that only two weeks ago would have led her to avert her eyes right away. She had found herself holding his gaze tonight, always daring a little longer.

Without fully realizing what she was doing, Olivia got her phone out of her pocket. She drank some more of her whiskey as she stared at the black screen, briefly debating with the voices in her head, trying to convince herself that calling him would be pointless.

He was probably asleep, or busy with Walter. The last thing he needed was to have her dump more of her problems on him. The truth was, she didn't even want to tell him about the card; she didn't want to _think_ about the card anymore.

But in the smothering silence of her place, thinking about it was all she could do. The implications of what it meant, to have found it on her floor, not mailed to her, clenched her heart. Her gaze was once again drawn back to the door, and she could just see him, that vicious ghost from her past, with both his hands splayed on the wood, pressing his ear to it so he could listen to her every sound.

Now feeling successfully crept out, Olivia rose up from her couch and made a beeline to her bedroom, downing the last of her glass and discarding it quickly. When she sat at the edge of her bed, she realized she still hadn't let go of her phone. She didn't give it any more thought, dialing Peter's number.

He swiftly answered, starting with a heavy sigh. "The FBI better have serious plans about placing me into some kind of sleep therapy center in a near future. Some of us actually do enjoy sleeping at night, you know, and the lack of it is making me way too aware of the fact that I'm not in my twenties anymore."

"I'm sorry," she apologized immediately, and honestly, feeling genuinely guilty about bothering him again so late. And yet, her uneasiness was already starting to subside, now that she was hearing a friendly voice.

"What is it this time?" He asked, clearly resigned. "Is it gonna make me regret eating these chicken wings Walter insisted we ordered?"

It was only dawning on her now that he was expecting her to tell him about a new case, requesting him and his father to join her at a crime scene. And why wouldn't he? Her calls had always been purely professional, except for that time she had called him weeks ago, right after John's death.

Unsurprisingly, she instantly felt as foolish as she had that first night, closing her eyes and briefly shaking her head, exasperated once again by her own behavior. She most definitely didn't want to talk about the card, with anyone, didn't even want to think about it for the next twelve months, but now, she had to find an explanation for her call.

"There's no new case," she admitted, her mind reeling fervently as her fingers played with the hem of a jacket she realized she still hadn't taken off. "I…I still don't know how I feel about you making a deal with Nina Sharp."

Right. That was exactly the kind of things we wanted to be told over and over again. But the words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself, and all she could do now was curse inwardly.

"Olivia, I'm fine," he told her with poise, just like he had earlier tonight. Thankfully, he seemed more endeared by her apparent concern than bothered by it, obviously taking the bait. "I know saying that will probably make me sound like a jackass again, but doing this was actually the first time I felt truly useful in weeks. Most of the time, between my father's insane theories and your FBI raids, I feel like a fish out of the water around you guys."

If she had been anyone else, someone who knew how to successfully communicate with people, she might have been able to tell him something reassuring, then. She could have convinced him of his worth by pointing out all the ways in which he had actually helped her a great deal of times already, starting by _now_ , since he was effectively distracting her again from something she didn't want to think about.

But as always, she ended up feeling exceedingly awkward and helpless instead, trying to think of something adequate to say in response, which was why she found herself uttering: "I just think you already had enough debts with Fat Eddie without adding Nina Sharp to the balance."

Peter loudly sucked air between his teeth, almost in a pained hiss. " _Big_ Eddie, Olivia," he corrected her. "It creeps me out every time you say Fat Eddie just thinking about what he would do to you if he heard you. And my ego is seriously starting to get bruised, here. Like I told you, I can take care of my debts."

There actually was a slight note of annoyance in his voice now, which brought all of her uneasiness back. "I'm sorry," she repeated, maybe more tersely than she attended to. "You're right, you're a big boy. It's not my place to tell you what to do."

"Nah, it's okay," he told her, the hint of annoyance already gone from his tone, his voice kind again. "You just have this uncanny habit of worrying a bit too much about other people's wellbeing, even on a day when it should be the other way around."

She had relaxed a little since the beginning of their conversation, but at his words, her entire body tensed up instantly. Even though she didn't make a sound, she swore in that instant that he just _knew_ something had changed.

It probably had everything to do with the several seconds long silence that followed. There simply was nothing she could find to reply to this without addressing a topic she did not want to address again.

"Olivia?" he called out after a few moments, and she could hear the barely concealed worry in his tone. She dismissed the thought rapidly, though, like she always did, her eyes once again closed, because she knew he was going to mention the card, there was no escaping it.

"What?" she heard herself say, her voice as tense as her every muscle, now wishing she hadn't called at all, because it had been stupid, and she really didn't want to talk about the damn card.

"Walter just walked right past me to get the leftover wings from the fridge, and he was yet again fully naked. I thought I should remind you of the things I put myself through for the bureau. Big Eddie's got nothing on this, I tell you."

The tension escaped her body all at once. She actually found herself smiling against all odds, grateful for the radical change of topic.

"Well, let's hope he won't join you in bed this time, then," she teased, now remembering the rest of their discussion in front of his hotel.

She especially remembered the way he had leant in to speak almost directly into her ear, once again daringly invading her personal space, while she let him do so quite willingly.

"If he does, I might actually have to relocate somewhere else for good. There are just some things a grown man should never experience with his father, and this one definitely is on top of the list."

"I'll make sure the bureau provides him with a new set of pj's, in compensation for your troubles. Maybe a cow design of some kind will appease his urge to take them off."

He actually chuckled goodheartedly at that. "That might be the first time I hear you really joking around, Dunham," he said, sounding impressed. "I am slightly moved."

"I guess we should leave it that, then. After all, I wouldn't want to keep you from the naked person in your bed."

"And then she ruins it," he said with an exasperated sigh, but she knew he was still smiling.

So was she.

"Goodnight, Peter," she told him softly, the words sounding more like a _thank you_ again, and they both knew it.

"Goodnight."

She did think of the card again, that night. Of course she thought of the card again. But she also managed to sleep for a few hours.

Sleeping on her birthday, _that_ was a first.


	7. 1x07 In Which We Meet Mr. Jones

" _Get some sleep while you can_."

Not for the first time (this week), Olivia deliberately ignored Broyles' directive.

She probably should have listened, but as usual, she ended up doing things her way. Instead of going home and sleeping off her jet lag, she was sitting in a campus bar.

Jet lag wasn't even the word for it. Except for when she passed out for thirty minutes on her journey home, she didn't get any sleep at all during the thirty-six hours she spent in Germany, never giving her body a chance to adjust itself to the new time zone. Given her typical (read: non-existent) sleep pattern, the weariness that had settled in her muscles and bones was hardly different from any other day.

What _was_ different was an odd restlessness she had brought back with her, a feeling that made it almost impossible for her to sleep during her long flight back from Europe; she had been way too fidgety. She could easily have put it on behalf of their lack of satisfying results on the whole Jones' case, but she wasn't that naïve.

Lucas and her brief lapse of judgment on his couch had more to do with it. She was familiar with the oppressive edginess that came with unsolved cases, and this? This was not it. She was too aware of her own body, and everything surrounding her; colors, smells and sounds, even the texture of whatever she touched… All of her senses were enhanced, and she couldn't find the off button.

Although unnerving in itself, she welcomed the feeling.

Over the past six weeks, she had spent so much time and energy beating herself up over what happened with John (all the while trying to adjust to her new job and everything that came with it), she had almost forgotten these sensations still existed. The warm, tingly kind that made her so receptive that the slightest touch or breath of air was enough to cause her skin to erupt in goosebumps. Not only did she forget this existed, she somehow convinced herself she wasn't allowed to feel, didn't deserve to feel alive.

She was undeniably alive now, more relaxed than she had been in a long time; what happened with Lucas made her feel like she had been shocked, or dosed up with something particularly potent, and hours later, the side effects had yet to wear off.

That thought was particularly fitting, considering she happened to be sitting in front of someone who was drugged with copious amount of psychedelics and electrocuted a few times earlier today, or so she was told. She found it hard to believe at the moment, looking at him, obviously coping remarkably well with it all. From what he was now telling her of his past 'experiences', he had built quite the tolerance level.

She still wasn't sure what they were doing here, sitting in that bar, drinking beer.

She definitely would not have gone for drinks with him a week ago. After what happened with John, she promised herself she would keep all of her work relationships to that. Work.

But a week ago was a week ago. And they were both thirsty. Not to mention that restlessness invading every inch of her, refusing to let her be.

So, why the hell not?

Once they found themselves sitting at the table, she briefly worried things would become awkward after that moment. They would realize they couldn't do this, do something as trivial as having a drink together, an activity that did not involve illegal experiments or life threatening situations. She shouldn't have worried.

Peter effortlessly resumed what he started in the car: the tale of everything that happened here while she was in Germany –she had not done so herself, for reasons that were obvious to her.

When he told her about the massive high he experienced in the lab, it led him to recall the various hallucinogens he discovered during his many trips around the world, probably only scrapping the tip of the iceberg. With every passing week, Olivia was learning that Peter truly was his father's son, although she wisely decided not to share that thought with him.

The waitress had just brought their drinks, resulting in the first real silence of the evening, but Olivia didn't mind. The silence was comfortable, and she enjoyed the banality of it all.

Just like her encounter with Lucas had revived something in her, sitting at that place made her realize how taciturn she had let herself become, and how much she missed doing something so…normal. The place was cheap but inviting; there was a good crowd, mostly grad students, given how close they were to Harvard. The room was filled with music, smells, conversation and laughter.

She even loved the soft taste of her beer, almost sweet in comparison to the strong, woody flavor of whiskey. She had fleetingly thought about ordering a well-deserved shot, but decided against it. A couple of those wouldn't be enough to get her drunk, not even remotely tipsy, but whiskey…loosened her, as it always had.

Given how 'loose' she already felt tonight, it would not be wise.

In front of her, Peter looked very relaxed, too, casually slumped back in his chair, beer in hand. He looked in his element at a place like this, as if we could have sat down with any of these people, and made himself a part of their little unit within the first two minutes. For someone like Olivia, who knew she always looked like the cop that she was, and that 'making friends' was not one of her top qualities, such natural openness was an impenetrable wonder.

She watched him as he scanned the room, his eyes slowly moving between different groups of people, a shadow of a smirk on his lips. At that instant, and after hearing a few of his stories, she had no trouble picturing him as the con man he was, not so long ago, before she forced him into a more honest form of life.

"See anything interesting?" She asked eventually, a smile in her voice.

He brought his gaze back to her, and not for the first time tonight, she thought his eyes looked darker than usual. It was probably the light.

"Anything? No," he answered with a smile of his own and a small shake of his head. "Anyone, however…People are always interesting."

She dared to hold his gaze, her lips curling into a smirk. "You're enjoying this, aren't you? Is this like a big playground to you?"

He huffed, his grin widening. "'Playground' isn't really the word I would use, but yeah, I do like the energy of this kind of place. I like people-watching, imagining what's going through their head, figuring out what their stories are."

Olivia simply stared with a skeptical smile. To be honest, she didn't doubt he could read people as well as he often claimed he could. He had been able to read her almost effortlessly on several occasions, after all, and she liked to think of herself as someone guarded enough to be hard to decipher.

Then again, he completely misjudged her on the day they met, unable to call on her blackmailing bluff, proof that his ability wasn't infallible either.

Remembering how well she had conned him, she pursed her lips in obvious cynicism, daring him to prove himself.

Peter, of course, was up to the challenge.

Without even looking around, keeping his warm, steady gaze on her, he said: "Most people in here are students from the campus, but there's also a good bunch of older people –us included. I can guarantee you that 8 out of 10 of these people used to go to school here. They're still coming back years later for sentimental reasons, or because they're trying to recapture their glory days."

She briefly tilted her head, hardly impressed. "Okay. But that's a safe guess. We're in a campus bar."

His smile became devious, understanding that she would not be easily convinced. "Alright, let's play then." His eyes finally left hers to scan the room again, and soon, he was tilting his chin towards a group of people behind her. "These businessmen. Two of them are supposed to be home right now. One wishes he was already there, probably a lover or a bunch of kids waiting for him, the other one…not so much."

Olivia briefly turned in her seat, glancing at the group, quickly taking them in and looking for the telling signs. One of them kept on checking his watch, looking more tense than any of his friends or colleagues. She rapidly spotted the other one; he was obnoxiously drinking from what probably was his third or fourth pint of beer. He definitely looked on the desperate side.

She faced Peter again, offering him a small, complaisant smile. "Again, that's an easy guess."

He chuckled, shaking his head and taking a sip of his beer, apparently unbothered. But from the way he shifted in his seat and briefly clenched his jaw once he was done swallowing, her skepticism might be starting to bruise his ego. "Go ahead then," he said, now looking defiant. "Pick a tricky one."

She had been waiting for it and was ready. She scanned the room for good measure, but her eyes quickly stopped on a couple sitting at the bar; she had noticed them the moment they took their seats. "What about that woman."

Peter shifted again to get a better look at the woman, giving himself a couple of seconds to take her in. "Well, you would have to be blind not to see she's enjoying herself, and her body language tells me she's not faking it either. It probably has nothing to do with the guy she's with."

Olivia looked back at the pair. The guy in question looked pretty content to be here, too, their bodies close, barely an inch separating them. "Why not?" She asked, her curiosity piqued.

"She's feeling good about herself. There's this energy about her. But see how close they are? They're practically touching, yet none of these vibes are going his way. He's definitely thinking he might get lucky tonight, but she's just loving the onion ring. And her job as a lawyer."

Having already taken in the woman's stylish and fitting ensemble, Olivia looked back at him, lips pursed again. "You can't possibly know that."

"Nope, but he's obvious enough, c'mon. And judging from their matching briefcases, I'd say they're from the same firm." She glanced back at them again, and she had to give it to him; they looked like a pair of lawyers. "She's confident about what she does, too," Peter continued, immersed in his analysis, now. "She's probably very good at her job, and it makes it all worth it."

Olivia kept her eyes on the other woman for a few more seconds, though she wasn't really seeing her anymore. Up until now, she had been having a surprisingly good time, but as she observed this stranger and listened to Peter's description, something sour began growing inside of her again.

"You know, eight weeks ago, that could have been me, sitting there," she eventually admitted, trying to sound unaffected, even though saying it out loud made her feel hollow.

When she brought her gaze back to Peter, he was staring at her, his brow furrowed in suspicion. "You're kidding right? You. That extroverted."

She let out a small, silent chuckle, shrugging a shoulder. She wasn't amused, but she had brought this upon herself. Without even truly realizing it, she had picked that woman because she recognized herself in her.

"I wasn't always such a hardass," she said, unable to hide the bitterness from her voice. "Two month ago, life was actually pretty good. I had a job I loved, a job I understood and was very good at, and I got to do it every day with a man who-"

She was interrupted by a beeping sound coming from her phone, announcing a new text message with perfect timing. She almost sighed in relief; she'd had no intentions of bringing John into this conversation, but as usual, the choice wasn't entirely hers. These days, John kept on invading her life in a great many ways, as if he didn't care that he had been dead for over six weeks.

Her relief did not last, though, as she got her phone out and read the words displayed on the screen.

" _I'm gonna pay a fortune for this, but I wanted to say again how great it was seeing you. And I still hate whoever called you last night. If you ever change your mind about needing information, I'm your man. Lucas_."

The warmth that soon invaded her cheeks was ruthless.

_I'm your man._

Right now, she was getting somewhat sick of all these men in her life who refused to let her be. She quickly put her phone away, before taking a long swig of her beer, in the hope that its coolness would make her blush recede faster.

She could avoid Peter's eyes all she wanted, he was not going to let this slide.

"What was that about?" he asked, sounding both amused and intrigued.

"Nothing," she replied categorically, finally meeting his eyes and giving him her sternest look, meant to convey how much she did not want to talk about it.

He chuckled. "That's definitely not 'nothing'. I didn't even know your skin could achieve that shade of red."

She pinched her lips, inevitably annoyed by his inability to let things go; she had been around him long enough to know he would keep nudging her for the rest of the evening if she didn't give him some kind of answer.

She didn't need to go into details.

"It's just…an old friend I met while I was in Germany. He's just checking on me, making sure I made it back alright."

 _Liar_ , she thought. In this case, she wasn't even a _good_ liar, and judging by Peter's smirk, he was less than impressed by her weak attempt.

"An old friend, uh?" His tone was annoyingly suggestive. "Texting you, when it's the middle of the night where he is, just to check on you. At least that explains it."

She merely scowled at him, disgruntled by this turn of events. "Explains what?"

He shrugged, his grin even cheekier now. "Since you've come back from your trip, you've just seemed a bit more…chipper. Meeting up with an 'old friend' would do that to you." He actually used air quotes.

Olivia did not like his tone, nor his attitude, and that damn smirk of his really got on her nerves, sometimes. Above all, she was annoyed at herself, for getting into this situation in the first place. Obviously, coming here was a terrible idea.

"Well, I do have a private life, you know," she said tersely, folding her arms in front of her chest, her back falling against her chair.

"Do you, now," he replied right away. Even though he was still smiling, there was nothing cheeky left in his demeanor. His gaze was unamused, almost arrogant.

It stung.

Hearing him point out the obvious, that she didn't have much of a private life these days, and to do so in such a sardonic way, it stung deeper than she could have anticipated, resulting in a sharp pang in her chest.

She recoiled slightly, almost imperceptibly, her arms tightening around herself, as she gave him a disappointed look. She had seen that kind of smug expression on his face before, had heard it in his tone, but weeks had passed since he last used it on her. She certainly didn't think she had done or said anything deserving such a low blow.

Peter apparently realized he had been out of line, because he briefly closed his eyes with a grimace, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound like a condescending asshole."

She almost scoffed at that. He did look and sound sorry, but she merely pursed her lips a bit more fiercely, holding her chin slightly higher.

"Seriously, it's not like I have anything to brag about regarding my personal life, these days," he continued. "The most exciting thing that has happened to me at nighttime in the past two months involved staring at an old-man-baby's dead body four hours after his birth. Oh, and there was that one time I had to change my father's sheets at 3am because he had, and I quote, ' _an accident_ ', and in case you're wondering, no, I'm not talking about the kind little kids have."

"Okay, I get it," Olivia promptly stopped him, unfolding her arms to raise her hands in defeat, closing her eyes and grimacing at the thought.

"Trust me, you don't," Peter said, in a pained but resigned tone. "My point is…" he actually leaned over the table for emphasis, trying to get her to meet his gaze again, but she stubbornly kept her eyes cast down, now. "I know how life consuming this is, all of this. I'm part of it, too. When we have a case, we spend six days out of seven working together in the lab, or running around after leads, and I'm sure you spend the remaining day of the week locked up in your apartment, filling up reports."

She remained silent. The hurt is words had inflicted was already gone, realizing his comment probably resulted from his own resentment at being stuck in this situation. Staying in Boston was his choice, as he made it clear after his brief abduction, but it didn't mean he was happy about it. She couldn't help thinking of him as a caged bird, the rare, exotic kind.

No matter how beautiful that bird was to look at, it needed its freedom to thrive.

She didn't want to meet Peter's gaze again, but her eyes didn't give her a choice, moving up on their own, soon locking with his. There was no trace of a smile left on his lips, his smugness having been replaced by understanding.

He looked tired, mostly, the ordeal he had gone through today having taken its toll despite his endurance; his features were strained, his eyes reddened, and she saw the slump of his body as he leaned on the table as a sign of exhaustion rather than relaxation.

And yet, she found herself thinking that he did look beautiful. She hastily forced that thought away, though, not remotely interested in finding out where the heck it had come from.

"So…" he said, almost cautiously. "What about that old friend?"

She made a face. He was unbelievable. Unbelievably persistent, in a very daring way.

He smiled tiredly. "I'm just curious," he insisted, though his tone remained soft. "I promise I can handle that kind of discussion without turning back into an immature teenage boy." He seemed to realize she was not convinced, because he added: "I would just like to know something about you that does not involve guns or criminal investigations."

She heard the hidden meaning in his words, and what he was implying. Because she had told him a story about her life, not so long ago; a story about a gun, a look, and birthday cards.

She stared at him for a few more seconds, before deciding to take a leap of faith. "His name's Lucas. He was my boyfriend in college. We were together for three years."

If he was pleased by his triumph, he didn't show a sign of it, for which she was grateful. "What happened?" He asked simply.

She shrugged, averting her eyes, not from embarrassment, but because her mind was already drifting, turning back to old (in addition to more recent) memories. "Our careers happened," she answered, letting out an unamused chuckle when she realized that, no matter what she talked about, everything went back to her job. "We had to make some choices, eventually, and I wasn't his. I was willing to make some compromises to make things work, he wasn't."

When she looked back up at him, he didn't look impressed. "He sounds like a great guy," he said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm from his voice.

"He is, actually," she countered, firmly enough to make it clear she would not tolerate any 'ex bashing' comments.

Lucas _was_ a good man, always had been. Realizing that she would never come first in his life plans had hurt at the time, but in retrospect, considering their personalities and their eagerness to prove themselves in their respective fields, it made sense; they would never have worked out. After the initial and typical down time that always followed that kind of breakup, Olivia had come to the conclusion that if they were meant to be, they would have found a way to make it work.

She had moved on, convinced Lucas had done the same. But last night, his words and actions claimed otherwise. He had apologized, praised her, and made it clear that he wanted her. And there definitely was a moment when she had wanted him back just as ardently. She felt almost safe with him, losing herself in an old dance, one that would never be completely forgotten. His scent made her feel intoxicated, another thing she would never be able to forget.

He had desired her, craved for her, making her feel so blissfully human, made of flesh and bones and sizzling nerves.

She had embraced those feelings and sensations, her whole being nearly sighing in relief, as some of the fears that had lodged themselves into her mind ever since John died in her arms finally faded away. John hadn't drained all the warmth from her heart. She hadn't turned into a block of ice, after all.

She couldn't deny that she had changed, though.

She felt Peter's steady gaze on her, but she remained lost in her thoughts, which were as bitter as the aftertaste the beer had left on her tongue. She stared at her bottle, scrapping the logo off with her nail. "We hadn't seen each other in years, and yet, he said he could tell something in me had 'shifted'."

Even though she had realized that herself shortly after John's death, it hurt to hear it said by someone she used to love, someone who knew who she used to be.

"When was the last time you went out with a friend?"

She raised her head, refocusing on Peter. From the way he looked at her, she understood he wasn't ignoring what she said, but was merely responding to it. When she focused on his question itself, though, her cheeks warmed up again.

Wasn't it what they were doing right now? Could they even call each other's 'friends'?

Peter picked up on her dilemma, and a small, almost endeared smile crept back on his lips; to her relief, he saved her from having to figure this out by adding: "I mean, when was the last time you went out with people who don't work with you, and who don't have a clue the horrors you see every day? You must have had a social life before all this, if what you said about being more outgoing is true."

She shrugged, still feeling flushed, tilting her head again. "I had a group of friends from college, yeah," she admitted, briefly thinking about that message her friend Beth had left on her machine a couple of days ago, about a surprise birthday party, and how they would love to have her there. Like many other similar offers, she had ignored it, pretending it didn't matter, not anymore. "I used to go out with them from time to time, but I haven't just turned into a workaholic in the past few weeks, either. That's just who I am."

"You don't say," he teased, which actually earned him an honest smile from her. "I'm guessing you used to come up for air on occasions, though, long enough to call one of them back and let them drag you out for a night of senseless fun."

Once again, she remained silent. He was right, of course, another proof that Peter _was_ good at this. She used to go out. Not every week, not even every two weeks, but she would go out.

But then, there had been John, and John was more important than keeping in touch with her old friends. Because John gave her so much more than fresh air. He made her feel vibrant with life.

Until he didn't.

Slowly, she met Peter's eyes again. He looked almost grave, now, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking about. "I let my personal life interfere with my job," she said, hating the way her throat still clenched at the thought of the man she loved. She despised even more how she couldn't tell if she was grieving his betrayal, or the life she used to have when he was a part of it. "I can't allow it to happen again."

Peter slowly shook his head. "You didn't let your personal life 'interfere', Olivia. You fell in love. Your job is one of the most demanding and stressful there is, and I'm sure it already was long before you got dragged into this mess. It's not hard to understand why these working relationships often evolve into something else. It's only human nature, to seek companionship and comfort."

Peter's effect on her was strange. His steady gaze and calm words often managed to ease her mind, if only for a moment, for reasons unknown to her. His eyes looked darker tonight, maybe because of the dim light. Or perhaps because of the unrelenting way he focused at her, and she stared right back.

She might be unsure about the current status of their relationship, unsure if they knew each other well enough to be 'friends', but the days when she couldn't hold his gaze for more than a fleeting second were definitely long gone. Whatever that might mean.

Of course, her phone interfered again. It rang, this time.

With a small smile, Peter averted his eyes at last, shaking his head, as if she had made it happen on purpose.

Olivia hadn't, but she sure was grateful for the interruption, grabbing the buzzing device and bringing it to her ear.

"Dunham."

"Hey, it's me." Charlie's greeting was as gruff as ever. "You busy?"

Her eyes darted to Peter, who had grabbed his bottle and slumped back in his seat, eyes still down. She realized that, in the only way he could, he was trying to give her some 'privacy', and she had to stifle a smile.

"No," she answered. "What's up?"

Charlie let out a short sigh. "I'll let you guess," was all he said, all she needed to hear.

This kind of code probably existed between every partner; in this case, it meant she had to go back to work, but that the situation wasn't serious enough to deserve a full report over the phone, not when they would see each other in a few minutes.

"I'll be there in ten," she said, hanging up and meeting Peter's gaze again.

It came to her, then, the realization that, if anything else, he had become her partner, too; the look he gave her made it obvious he didn't need an explanation either.

"Do we need to pick up Walter?" He asked simply, and she couldn't conceal her next smile. All things considered, this had been a nice and needed interlude.

She shook her head, dropping a bill on the table for her beer. "You still have the night off," she answered. "You should stay here, enjoy it while it lasts. I have to go back to HQ, though. You gonna be okay getting back?"

He chuckled, watching her as she got up on her feet. "You mean, will I be okay walking the three blocks back to the hotel on my own? Yeah, I think I can manage."

She pinched her lips and nodded her head in goodbye, slipping her coat on, her mind already halfway gone from the place and back to work, waking away from the table. She didn't make it far.

"Olivia."

She halted, turning around and refocusing on him. Once again, he looked way too at ease in his chair, and she knew that if he decided to stick around, he would soon be accosted by one of the single ladies who had been giggling obnoxiously at a nearby table. If he didn't do the accosting first.

She swiftly decided not to focus on that thought either, pushing it out of her mind, raising a curious eyebrow instead.

"Just…think about what I said," he told her with an intent look. Noting her confusion, he added: "Don't forget to come up for air."

Another second passed, then another, and still, she held his gaze. Eventually, she pursed her lips and nodded again, silently thanking him, and he answered with his own smile.

As she left the building, stepping into the chilly night air, she made a mental note to call Beth back in the morning.


	8. 1x08 The Equation

When Peter opened the door and found Olivia standing on the other side of it, his frown told her he was as surprised by the initiative as she had been when she decided to come here.

A strong smell of bleach escaped the hotel room, making her nose wrinkle, noting the thick gloves he was wearing, as well as the rag on his shoulder. While she catalogued these obvious signs of having caught him in the middle of a cleaning spree, Peter eyed the pink box she held under her arm, the crease between his eyes deepening.

Olivia couldn't help but think about all these other times she had stood there, usually in the middle of the night, and about how he would always greet her with various degrees of disgruntled looks.

Or, various degrees of undress.

"Hey," she said, sounding oddly winded. "Bad time?"

There was caution in her voice; she'd heard enough stories by now to know what types of 'accident' Peter sometimes had to deal with.

He smiled with a tired shake of his head. "Nothing gruesome. Walter's mysophobia flared up. I decided I would rather bleach the whole place now than have him breakdown at 2am because germs have taken over his bed."

There was something almost fascinating in observing the changes in Peter's behavior when it came to his father. He was becoming more patient and caring, slowly getting past the anger and resentment that had dominated his demeanor when she first met him.

"Why don't you come on in," Peter said, then, moving aside, taking off his gloves and throwing them unceremoniously inside the room.

Olivia didn't budge, shaking her head. "There's no need, really," she swiftly declined, uneasiness now creeping inside of her.

She may be on friendly terms with the Bishops, Peter more so than Walter, she still felt like it had been presumptuous of her to come here instead of calling, especially after what happened to Walter.

"I…just wanted to tell Walter we were able to find Ben, thanks to him," she explained, a bit clumsily. "I'll be on my way shortly."

Peter smirked, grabbing the box from her. "That's great news, and I'm glad things worked out, but you brought _food_ , Olivia. Just come inside."

As he was giving her little to no choice, she complied, although the awkwardness she now felt made her ramble a little more. "It's not…it's just leftover donuts someone left on my desk, they would have gone to waste."

Peter chuckled as he closed the door. "You'd think people would have realized by now that you don't eat. I picked that up after three days."

"I do eat," she countered, defensively, "…sometimes."

His smile faltered, then, his frown reappearing as he stared at her cheekbone. "Ow," he said. "How did that happen?"

Just as Olivia understood he must have noticed her bruised cheek, which apparently hadn't been as visible in the hallway, Peter raised a hand to her face.

He seemed to have done so instinctively, the gesture definitely not thought through, judging by how he quickly stopped himself before his fingers even brushed her skin. His hand froze in midair, inches away from her cheek, until he let it fall back on the box he was still holding.

Inevitably, an awkward pause followed, just as brief, and just as intense. While Peter's fingers drummed a few times upon the cardboard lid, Olivia averted her eyes and cleared her throat, trying to dissipate the tension.

"That's just a normal day at the office," she said. "Minor injury caused by an angry fist."

"How's that fist doing?" Peter asked as he finally walked to the table and put the box down, following her lead and pretending whatever just happened hadn't actually happened. "I hope it's in jail, with the rest of the body attached to it."

Meeting his eyes again, Olivia shook her head, lips pursed. "Unfortunately, no. She used those flashing lights on me and ran off."

"I lost one of my shirts to those," he said in sympathy. "Walter tested them on me," he added, noting her confusion. "Because why wouldn't he keep on using me as his guinea pig, really…" The hint of bitterness in his voice said a lot about his state of mind on the matter.

After another short but heavy pause, Olivia looked around. "Where _is_ Walter?" Their hotel room wasn't _that_ big.

Peter motioned for her to follow him, walking to a closet. "We've regressed a little," he said simply.

Slowly, he slid the closet's door open. Walter was in there indeed, huddled against the wall. The way his face began to twitch told them he was aware of their presence, but he did not look up.

"Hey Walter," Peter said, patiently. "Olivia's here. She's got some good news."

After a few seconds, Walter raised his eyes to look at Olivia. She forced herself to smile a little, even though this other sign of 'regression' did not make her feel any better. "We found, Ben," she announced. "He's back with his father. We found him in a red dungeon, like your friend said we would."

Walter's face lit up at her words; she knew then that coming here instead of simply calling had been the right choice. "That's wonderful," he said. "Is the boy all right?"

"He'll be fine," Olivia smiled. "Children are resilient."

This statement must have been triggering somehow, his expression already changing, becoming sullen again.

"Olivia brought us donuts," Peter said.

He sure had learned the way to his father's heart –or stomach. Walter looked up at him again, unable not to. "Is there any jelly?"

Peter smiled. "Come and find out."

Walter did just that, extorting himself from the closet and shuffling to the table, his body language nervous and tense. He swiftly – if not a bit shakily – opened the box, grabbing a donut before taking a large bite of it. As jelly squirted between lips and pastry, he closed his eyes in pure delectation, as if this was the best thing he'd ever tasted.

Peter dug in, too, somehow managing to be a lot less messy. Olivia watched them eat, her mouth slightly pursed; although the food did seem to have a positive effect on the older Bishop, she saw the nervous ticks that twisted his traits as he chewed.

"I'm sorry, Walter," she found herself saying. "I never meant for you to spend a whole night back in that place."

Walter offered her a quivery smile, before wiping his mouth on his sleeve, his movements still too brisk. He did maintain eye contact as he said: "You don't have to apologize to me, dear. It was my decision."

"That's what I told her," Peter felt the need to point out.

But Olivia pinched her lips and tilted her head, unconvinced. "It wasn't fair," she admitted. "A father looking for his son? I tugged at your heartstrings to get you to volunteer."

"You're very good at this, you know," Peter intervened again, a hint of exasperation in his voice. There was a smile on his lips when she looked at him, though. "Feeling responsible for everything that happens, beating yourself up?" He elaborated. "And obviously, you _do_ possess a real talent when it comes to getting us big-headed mortals to behave more selflessly than usual."

She scrunched up her nose, shaking her head in denial even as Walter nodded in agreement.

"I am all right, Agent Dunham," Walter said, soberly. "I cannot say this was a pleasant experience, but it was humbling. It made me realize how asleep I was, for seventeen years, and how...disconnected from reality my behavior used to be. Still is at times, evidently," he added with a tilt of his head toward the closet he was just in. "I am aware that I still have a long journey ahead of me, and I know I will never be as I once was but...I am grateful for every moment I get to spend out here. With my son. Helping you. I owe it all to you, Olivia."

Olivia might be good at blaming herself, she was _not_ good at accepting compliments or words of gratitude. All she could do was nod curtly with a pinched smile, swaying a little on the spot, avoiding both sets of Bishops' eyes.

She would lie if she said it didn't feel kind of nice, though; to know she had brought father and son together, the way she had Ben and his dad. Despite the hurdles and massive issues that kept them apart for almost two decades, watching them learn to be in each other's life again helped her feel...grounded.

Less than two months had passed since her own life had been irrevocably transformed, but in more than one way, she was glad both these men were a part of her new truth.


End file.
